Title text: I'd like to see more damage assessments for hurricanes hitting New York and flooding Manhattan -- something like the 1938 Long Island Express, but aimed a bit more to the west. It's just a matter of time.

Explanation

It must be hurricane season! This comic gives some ideas on upcoming hurricane paths. Lets look at each path.

Hurricane Illinois-Has-It-Too-Easy: They really do. This smart hurricane, while actually impossible, comes from Canada to strike little old Chicago before heading back to Canada. Interestingly, though it did not affect the Chicago area or correspond with the path displayed in the comic, roughly one year later a superderecho, a storm resembling a hurricane or tropical storm in movement and form, struck central and South Illinois, in addition to much of Missouri and Kansas.

Hurricane Where-The-Hell-Is-Bermuda: Nice little irony here, normally people get lost once they get to the triangle and never come back. This poor hurricane can't even get there to get lost.

Hurricane Screw-It-Let's-Just-Trash-Florida-Again: Why you would want to live in Florida during hurricane season is beyond me. Sticking out from the rest of the US, Florida is in a nice spot to get hurricanes from the East, South, and West. And with the state not being very high or wide, it is common for a hurricane to run over Florida, lose some strength, then rebuild in the Gulf of Mexico, only to do a U-turn and strike again.

Hurricane Freud: You just need to know that Sigmund Freud had a thing about sex, and let's just leave it at that.

Hurricane Red and Blue: Playing a game of Light Cycles from Tron, Hurricane Blue lost -- it crashed into the lightwall of Hurricane Red.

Hurricane Cos(x): Its path resembles a sine wave, though it's not actually centered on the equator, ranging from about 5.5° to 9.5° north latitude.

The title text refers to a 1938 Category 5 Hurricane that caused $41.1 billion in damage in current money. Had it been further west it could have caused more damage as the right side of a hurricane is stronger and more destructive than the left side as the winds on the right side push water inland. Four years after this cartoon was published, Hurricane Sandy did strike the New York–New Jersey area, causing an estimated $74 billion in damages.

Transcript

Hurricane Illinois-Has-It-Too-Easy comes from somewhere to the northwest, goes through Illinois, and then back to the northwest.

Hurricane Where-the-Hell-Is-Bermuda enters from the east side of the map, wanders around the Atlantic in a scribble, goes north for a while, and then peters out.

Hurricane Screw-It-Let's-Just-Trash-Florida-Again comes from the east, starts to curve to the north, and then turns sharply to head straight for Florida and zigzag through it.

Hurricane Freud starts in the Gulf of Mexico, draws a set of balls to Florida's cock, and then comes on land and stops.

Hurricane Red and Hurricane Blue (which is a blue line) are playing a game of Tron, zipping in straight lines and right angles around Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba. Red successfully cuts off Blue and then dies shortly thereafter.

Hurricane cos(x) forms a graph of cos(x) along the bottom edge of the map.]

There is more to win from predicting something that is going to happen than there is to lose from predicting something that doesn't happen. Tharkon (talk) 19:30, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Has anyone any idea what the "&" symbol is about in Hurricane Where-The-Hell-Is-Bermuda? 141.101.97.215 12:32, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Regarding Hurricane cos(x):

If Equator is the x-axis and the y-axis goes through the Prime meridian of Greenwich it would be possible to say if this was a true cosine function hurricane.

A cosine would be 1 (the maximum value) at x=0 (i.e. the maximum value would occur under Greenwich), whereas a sine would be 0 at x=0.

If it had been a basic cos(x) without any constants added, then it should have been centered along the equator instead of as it is - ranging from about 5.5° to 9.5° north latitude.

But if the formula was of the form a*cos(b*x)+c with a, b and c given constant, the wave could move to the center of this range with c=7.5°. With the constant a=2° the wave would move between the max and minimum of the range, and then b could be chosen to make the wave length fit with the path shown in the map.

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